There Is No I In Team
by TViator
Summary: With a week before Regionals, Mr. Schuester declares that it's time for New Directions to all be somewhat friends again. Pairings: New Directions as a whole, Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana.


**Disclaimer: Never, ever, will be mine.  
>Warnings: Femslash. Don't like, don't read.<br>A/N: Written for lar_laughs and Writing For Relief. :] R&R. **

**There Is No I In Team**

When it comes down to it, New Directions is always closest in the few sparse moments before they jump out onto the stage with enthusiasm during a major performance. They bellow out lyrics loudly or whisper them reverently, soulfully, with hidden meanings. Any moment before that was filled with drama that threatens to overtake them and to tear them apart, sometimes with Sue gleefully standing in the background.

The past few weeks barely scratch at the surface of problems that are lying hidden for weeks on end. Phones never seem to be quiet with the amount of texts filled with gossip running rampant through the school – or at least those of Glee club members. The arguments between one Quinn Fabray and Rachel Berry have become legendary and the reason? None other then Finn Hudson who always looks half torn between wanting to be friends with Rachel and being afraid of the scary blond. Santana is so focused all the time on reaffirming her heterosexuality that she barely notices when Sam begins loosing interest in her, especially after her original song about his...fishy lips. Along with the return of Kurt came the constant brutal bullying from Karofsky that everybody believed wouldn't last long. His brother was Finn after all and after last time, every thought Finn would stand up for Kurt. Well, that train of thought failed.

Nothing out of the ordinary, this was the everyday lives of New Directions.

Maybe that's why all of them immediately sense something is off when Mr. Schuester walks in, claps his hands and announces that with one week left till Regionals, they were all going to bond as a team.

"Mr. Schue -" Rachel immediately begins.

"No," he shakes his head. "You guys haven't been getting along recently and I want us to win Regionals as a team, nothing less. By the time Regionals roll around, I want New Directions back together again."

"Easier said then done," one of them mutters.

But Mr. Schue refuses to listen to any of them and after several more minutes of grumbling disappointment and protesting; they got down to practicing the choreography for their upcoming performance. For the most part, all of it went swell, the dancing and singing – up until the moment Quinn purposely trips Rachel and Santana has pushed Artie into the piano.

"Keep your eyes off Finn, RuPaul," the blonde snaps. Santana doesn't bother to dignify her actions with an answer.

Mr. Schuester sighs and rubs his forehead tiredly. Even he wasn't immune to the constant teenage war going on right underneath his nose. "I think we'll break early today. Remember what I said."

Kurt glances around to the side anxiously for a moment before he tentatively begins to walk closer to his locker. He's wearing one his more favoured cashmere sweaters today and would prefer to make it through the school day without being slushied.

The past few weeks back to McKinley have made Kurt wary of any large and overbearing footballer players ready to either slushie him or push him into a locker. For a moment, he thinks he is home free before he is shouldered roughly into the locker.

"Excuse me," he cries indignantly.

"Are you speaking to me, freak?" Karofsky asks, turning to face Kurt.

He has protests on the tip of his tongue but he doesn't bother to reply to avoid any more confrontation. Except for the fact the footballer takes the lack of reply as something offensive as well.

Karofsky approaches closer, pressing Kurt obscenely closer to the lockers behind him. "I said," He grunts out, "are you speaking to me, _freak_?"

"Leave him alone, Karofsky," Puck interjects, grabbing onto the beefy boy's shoulder and pulling him away from Kurt.

Karofsky shrugs his shoulder to get rid of Puck's hand before he spins around and glares at Puck, "Back off, Jew."

"Whoa, chill there big boy," Puck replies. "I'm just defending my friend here."

Sam and Mike stands on either side of him.

"Bunch of losers and freaks," Karofsky mutters still loud enough to be heard by the others before he turns around and shoulders Kurt on his way to leave. He doesn't get very far though as Sam tackles him down and Puck and Mike are on him in seconds.

Finn stands to the side with Quinn, torn between staying beside his girlfriend and running to help his brother.

"You can't help him, Finn. You want to be Prom King, don't you?" Quinn asks, holding onto Finn's hand tightly.

"Well, yeah, I guess."

"Then you've got to let Kurt stand up for himself."

The blonde cheerleader finds herself walking through the halls aimlessly, mumbling something about bunnies and them taking over the world. A pink hat is situated on her head and she's cheerful when she sees Santana by her locker.

"S!" she shouts cheerfully.

"What do you want, B?" Santana asks, almost tiredly.

Immediately that puts a damper on Brittany's spirit. "Did you want to hang out tonight?" she asks.

"I'm going out to hang out with Sam," she responds as she shuts her locker and turns fully to look at Brittany. "See you later, Brittany."

Santana turns and leaves. It's easier to avoid falling harder for her (former) best friend when they're not spending alone time together.

The two of them are sitting on Sam's couch, in the middle of a movie and Santana attempts to kiss Sam again only to be valiantly eluded.

Sam sighs and shifts to place space between him and Santana even though she's practically in his lap.

"I think we need to talk."

Meet me in the auditorium. – Finn.

A note in Finn's messy scrawl is delivered to both Quinn and Rachel. Kurt, Mercedes and Tina are lurking mischievously in the shadows when first the blonde and then the brunette walks into the auditorium. Kurt motions for them to hasten their pace and they lock the doors to prevent the two girls from exiting. They settle outside the door and prepare to wait for a long time till the diva and former cheerleader settle their differences.

Quinn is idly playing a few notes at the piano on the stage when Rachel enters. The brunette recalls the scene from a few weeks ago all too vividly and she pauses once she realizes that Finn is nowhere in sight. Backtracking (because she is more tired of fighting with Quinn then anyone realizes), she gives the blond one last glance before she darts towards the door silently, shaking it quietly several times futilely before she gives up her ninja act and pushes at it the door with more force.

"Someone open this door this instant!" she shouts.

"Rachel?" Quinn questions, the usual bite in her voice gone.

"I-I thought Finn was here," she stammers before her skin flushes from embarrassment and anger at herself. She doesn't understand why her ability, something she's proud of, to speak is always stolen by none other then the blonde when it's made clear to her, on more then one occasion that Quinn is no longer in love with her.

"I thought Finn was here."

And in an instant, it's like the soft and fragile Quinn is gone. Rachel misses Quinn taking her out for picnic dates and the two of them doing nothing but lying in her bed. Finn was and is still always in between the two of them.

"He told me to meet him here," Rachel replies, she stands a little taller, a little surer of herself. She has control of the situation.

"I doubt that," Quinn scoffs. "He told me to meet him here."

Rachel opens her mouth again; words that didn't concern Finn wanting to slip pass her lips before she slowly closes her mouth and shakes her head. She knows that mentioning the past will lead to another heat filled argument but even though her mind knows that, her heart doesn't.

"You can't change the past, you know. We were real."

Repeated words, she has said them already.

Quinn looks away for a moment before she meets Rachel's eyes with one of her fierce glares.

"It was just a phase," she responds. "What I have with Finn is real." That is far from the truth and Quinn knows that Rachel has the slightest inkling of this fact. What else does Quinn know? She knows that Rachel will make it out of Lima and onto Broadway and she knows that a certain football player will hold her back with his mediocre feelings and dreams. She just needs to wrap Finn around her little finger a little bit more to ensure everything goes according to her self-sacrificing plan.

"Quinn -" Rachel tries again.

"No."

The two of them are at lost at what to do. By now in most of their arguments, one of them would have run away to avoid the predicament but here they were locked together in a room. Their gazes slide away from each other but at the same time, keep coming back. Quinn is surveying Rachel, the tired look in her eyes and the bags underneath them and the wary and defiant stance she holds herself in. Quinn knows that the brunette is not so subtly doing the same. The two of them have always been together better then they are apart.

Quinn is trying to play the hero in their tragedy but all Rachel has ever wanted was...well, Quinn.

She steps a little closer, invades Quinn's space a little more and the blonde gives her a warning look. "What are you doing?"

"Proving to you that this isn't just a phase," Rachel mutters out before she backs Quinn into the wooden back of a chair and kisses her. Butterflies still flutter in her stomach in the presence of the blonde. She's surprised at her spontaneous behaviour.

Quinn rejects at first. She tries to push Rachel away but the brunette steadfastly refuses. She denies that the heat blooming in her stomach is cause by Rachel. She hates the way she feels like Rachel is stealing the very air out of her lungs or the fact that she can hear the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. None of this is Rachel. She can deny only for so long though. Being the self-sacrificing hero was never really that fun.

"Sorry," Quinn whispers after they part, breathless, her hands are lightly resting on Rachel's waist.

"Don't you dare pretend what you know is best for me, Quinn Fabray," Rachel replies. "Because I don't care what's best for me, I just want you."

Quinn just hides her eyes sheepishly.

A triumphant shout echoes from outside of the door and both of them whirl towards it, heart thundering. "I knew it!"

Quinn is at the door in an instant, "Open the door or I will make the rest of your life a misery of slushies!"

Santana is crying when Brittany finds her. It isn't because she is heartbroken, no; Santana breaks hearts, not the other way around. When she's sober, she's going to blame it on being an emotional drunk. So Sam has just dumped her but that doesn't mean a lot when she knows deep down in her heart that it still belongs to her (former) best friend, not the football player.

"What's wrong, S?" Brittany asks, concern colouring her voice.

"You," Santana replies. She is doing the only thing she knows how to when she's cornered and hurt – lash out and Brittany has been a long standing object of her frustration and anger.

"Santana -"

"No!" Santana interjects before Brittany can begin. "You've got Artie so go back to four eyes."

"Be nice to Artie," Brittany pouts.

She's staring at that pout on Brittany's face and she can't help the rush of confession coming over here. "When I kiss Sam, all I can do is think about your sweet lady kisses and when he's pressed up against me, I miss soft planes instead of hard muscles, I -"

Brittany kisses her to shut her up.

"We broke up," Brittany somehow manages to voice the information in between the kissing sessions.

Artie seemed to know for some reason that the love she has for him is no longer the one he wants. He's a heartbroken boy but in high school, romances disappear in a few fleeting days.

"I-I..." Santana attempts to say.

"I know," Brittany nods her head sagely because although she wasn't that smart when it came to academics, she was very receptive to everything else going on around her.

Kurt finds himself shoved into a locker, a daily occurrence not but what's not so daily is his brother stalking over to the football player who did it and spinning him around.

"Back off," Finn enunciates with a shove away from Kurt.

"Oh, finally grow a pair, Finnocence?" Santana asks from the side where she is watching with Brittany.

Finn is loathe to admit it to Santana that he still hasn't actually worked up the courage to stand up to scary Quinn or against the high school social order in general but Quinn has broken up with him and Kurt is his brother and tension at home has been rising.

He doesn't even get the chance to reply to Santana because the footballer hasn't taken kindly to Finn stopping his bullying and a fight breaks out between the two of them. Both footballers manage to hand out well placed punches and tackles into the surrounding walls and lockers. A crowd has even formed around them, cheering them on before Coach Bieste appears to break them apart.

Finn knows he's in trouble.

Well, on the upside, at least he stood up for his brother first.

Regionals are on them. The lights shine down on their faces brightly, blinds them slightly but they're all use to it now and they execute their performance without a flaw. Finn has somehow managed to convince Mr. Schue to not suspend him from performing after the fight with the other football player and Artie and Sam seem to (not really) have come to terms with breaking up with their respective girlfriends. All of them are sticking Glee before their feelings though, a growth for them certainly. They have spent minutes, hours and days practicing their routine and Rachel even manages to share the spotlight slightly by gracefully giving up parts of the solos to other people (although some people suspect it's more because Quinn told her too then her own willingness).

They give a final bow and file off to the side of the stage as they wait for the judges to confer and to come a decision. Adrenaline is running through their veins and they stand in a huddled group, voices speaking over each other in their haste and excitement over their performance and the roar of applause they got after it.

The groups are called back on stage and Mr. Schuester follows them this time. Anticipation is draped across all of them as they hear the crinkle of the letter open and the announcer declares who is in third place. They are still in the running.

"And first place goes too..."

Drum roll.

"McKinley High's New Directions!"

The cheer is deafening. Everything seems to slow down as a trophy is placed in their conjoined hands and they're jumping up and down and giving each other hugs – and kisses in the case of a few of them.

"You did it!" Mr. Schue shouts. It's hard to hear him over the cheers, the laughter and the tears.

"No, Mr. Schue," Puck corrects him. "We did it."

New Directions is partying at Rachel's house. No tickets or amounts on alcohol anyone can have and Quinn has successfully convinced Rachel not to wear that hideous green dress she wore last time. In the background, Pink is playing and all of them are sprawled out on the floor or various chairs and couches in a tight circle.

"A toast," Artie suggests, raising his bottle of beer, "to us."

"To us," comes back a general grumble.

"Well, I think I was the most valuable singer..."

"Shut it, Berry."

"Santana!" it is an attack on both fronts from Quinn and Brittany.

Santana sends Quinn a glare but quiets down.

Puck laughs and mouths 'whipped' at Santana before he gives the four girls a lecherous look, "So how about the four of you plus one Puckersaraus?"

The general reaction was silence, followed by Rachel verbally berating Puck and a more physical beating from Santana.

They are all certainly going in new directions.

Now if only Regionals came every week, they would be set for a drama free high school career.

Maybe.


End file.
